1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to an image forming apparatus and a method of copying a two-sided card thereof, and, more particularly, to an image forming apparatus and a method of copying two-sided cards such as bank cards, ID cards, business cards, courtesy cards and so on, with automatic alignment, rotation and layout of card images on a piece of paper.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional image forming apparatuses such as an MFP apparatus has been demonstrating the “ID copy” function. In this function, a user selects an “ID copy” mode, places one side of a card on a scanner glass which corresponds to an upper half of a piece of A4 paper, and presses a copy button. The image of the one side of the card is scanned and stored in an MFP memory. Next, the user places the other side of the card on the scanner glass, and presses the copy button again. The other side of the card is scanned as well. Next, the page is rendered from the two images of the card. Finally, the page is printed. FIG. 1 demonstrates an example of copying a two-sided card using the above function.
U.S. Publication No. 2006/0268361 by Marc Krolczyk (Xerox) describes a user interface of a system for copying a two-sided identification document and a corresponding method.
Japan patent application 2009/100102 by Ocada Mamoru describes an image forming apparatus which operates in the same method as the existing “ID copy” function in general. As additional improvements, several types of methods for aligning card side images on one page were proposed.
However, the existing “ID copy” function in an MFP has several drawbacks. First, images of card sides are copied without any deskewing and orientation. Thus, a result of a copy may be significantly skewed, which would make the copy look careless. Moreover, a user may accidently place card sides in opposite orientations (rotated by 180 degrees) or one side in landscape and the other side in portrait orientation (rotated by 90 or 270 degrees).
Existing copying devices allow only one layout: a first card side copied on an upper half of a page with portrait orientation and a second card side copied on a lower half of the page. Accordingly, it is not possible to copy a card of which the size is bigger than a half of the page with portrait orientation using the “ID copy” function. Duplex copying is not possible either using the “ID copy”.
Besides, a user may forget to place a front or back side of a card on the scanner and press the copy button. That is because there are no alerts for blank page copying.
Often only a part of the scanner glass corresponding to an upper half of a piece of A4 page is used for scanning in the “ID copy” mode. In this case, when a user places a card in the center of the scanner glass and copies the card, a clipped or deteriorated image of the card may be printed. Nevertheless, there are no alerts for such a user error either.
Furthermore, the “ID copy” function is not connected with such useful functions as “scan-to-FTP” and “scan-to-email”. Accordingly, it is not possible to store both sides of a card to a file without additional processing by means of software on a PC.
The aforementioned existing ID copy function is illustrated in FIG. 1.